Human World — Animal World: An Interpretation of Instinct in Some Late Husserlian Manuscripts

Abstract

Reading Edmund Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts always causes some surprise, because they enable the reader — almost as if he were perusing the pages of a diary — to enter into the personal reflections of the writer and to follow the line of his thoughts and associations just as they originally and spontaneously came to be and, therefore, often without the controls imposed by the needs of exterior coherence. This is particularly true with regard to the manuscripts not intended for immediate publication or not following the scheme and outline of a lecture, but simply consisting of sheets, and sometimes even of the empty spaces left on sheets already used for other purposes, on which he “collected” whatever passed through his mind.